The best wife in the world is on the right. That's my look-alike on the left.

I know some of you guys might differ on me with this, so let me tell you what happened today. We have been working on getting a shipment of materials for the AM tower guy wires replacement project through customs. It was quite the comedy of errors, but today everything came together at last and we were ready to go.

Our truck was in the shop getting the undercoating beefed up. That was partly because the coating was wearing out and some rust was starting to show up. And it was partly because we have several hundred dollars worth of new parts under there which we want to protect. I got the truck back just in time to go up island to Hybur shipping and load up 3,300+ feet of 3/8″ galvanized steel cable. It was on one big spool and weighed in at over 900 pounds. Once the forklift loaded that in the truck and we tossed in the other bits and pieces of hardware, I headed toward the road. And here’s where I did a bonehead thing.

At least there's good airflow now.

I’d noticed that the forklift driver didn’t get the spool of cable all the way to the front of the truck bed. So I tapped the brakes to see if I could scooch it up ahead of the rear axle. Yup, it scooched all right. WHAM!!! Now I need a new back window on the truck as well as some bending, welding, and painting. There goes some more time and money we don’t have.

The whole window only filled a few inches in the shop vac.

What does that have to do with Mildred being the best wife in the world? Well, I called her on the way home and gave her the good news that I got the stuff – followed by the bad news of my knuckleheaded stunt. From her response, you’d have thought I was her little boy telling her I didn’t get the part I wanted in the school play — a tender “Awwww!” She didn’t seem to even come close to being as mad at me as I was.

Come-alongs -- one of the greatest inventions ever!

So, now I have that to deal with along with getting our passports sent off to Tegucigalpa tomorrow, picking up Jim and Karen Avella at the airport (the good part!), and finding someone to take all that hardware from Roatán to La Ceiba and then transfer it from one ship to another so it can get over to Utila. Before I can send off the hardware, I need to inspect it and then, somehow get it back on the truck. It was easy to get it off the truck with a come-along.  But I don’t think my crane has the reach or the lift capacity to put it back in there. It’s probably about time for me to come up with another invention. Inventing stuff is a big part of the fun of being here.

For more news from down here take a listen to the HRGS Update.

Tomorrow is the big day! Well, it’s another big day, anyway. We have lots of them here. We’re getting ready for a visit from our founding president of Bible Basics International, Dr. Eugene Priddy; our current president, Rev. Evan Drake; the vice president of International Ministries, Rev. Herman Meister; and BBI’s Spanish director, Rev. Samuel Montoya. This weekend is the celebration of 50 years of ministry for Dr. Glen Solomon, the president of Baptist Ministries here, and these men are coming to participate. They will also be conducting some seminars in the days to come. Herman even said he would help fix the mower and then use it if we get it going.

At the bottom of this entry, you’ll find this week’s HRGS Update. Once again, we had way too much fun with that! But first, let me tell you another reason why being flexible isn’t enough for Roatán missionaries. We need to be liquid. That’s why I’ve included this sunset I shot a few weeks ago to help calm me down.

In an effort to get things looking a little less “lived in,” I wanted to finish setting up the new work station I’m building for our studio operations. That project has been sprawled all over the reception desk and the plan was to get it done and into place on Wednesday. I didn’t want our president to walk in and have the first thing he saw be computer parts scattered all over. He probably wouldn’t mind, but I would. However, at about noon on Tuesday, the florescent light in the on air studio quit. It would have been nice if it was just burned out bulbs, so that was obviously not the case.

First thing, Wednesday morning, I went to the shop to get my electrician’s tool belt. When I got to the shop, it was hot, hot, hot!! No air conditioner. The line conditioner that we had installed recently blew its fuse, probably because of abuse from the power company the night before. I briefly lamented the fact that it uses a fuse instead of a breaker. (Peter hadn’t noticed that when he bought it because he thought it was the same as the one he’d gotten previously for his house.) Then I dug out a 10 amp fuse, put it in the fuse holder, and found out that the fuse holder was just a tiny bit smaller than the fuse. I tried to pull it back out and the end came off the glass fuse. When I tried to pull out the remains of the fuse, they just crumbled. Sigh! So much for hurrying up to replace the light ballast so I could get back to what I needed to be doing.

I rooted around and found a fuse holder that takes a normal sized fuse and soldered it temporarily in place until we can get the right circuit breaker and install it. I fired up the air conditioner and the compressor did not run. Now what!! I eventually found a loose connection in the control section of the A/C and was finally able to get back to the original interruption, replacing the ballast in the on-air studio light fixture. I think I got to work on the computer for about 30 minutes Wednesday. Oh well! Since today is our day off, I didn’t touch it today. I still have till about 11:00 tomorrow morning to check all the satellite downloads and get that computer wrapped up and put in a better place. No pressure.

Peter and I were hard at work after midnight this morning. Yesterday was the day we’d set for installing the “new” refurbished FM computer. It would have been much easier if we actually could have installed it. I use the term “‘new’ refurbished” because none of the computers for our dual language project are new. They are just cleaned up with new hard drives and upgrades to the operating systems and other software.

We had run into a bit of a puzzle when I had the new FM computer almost ready and tried to install a new video adapter so that we could spread the desktop over two monitors like the old FM computer. When I powered up the refurbished computer with the new adapter installed, nothing happened. No power on self test, no beeps, no humming of hard drives, nothing but a blank black screen. So I tried a known good video adapter from my own computer and had the same problem. I wondered if the power supply wasn’t up to the job. So I unplugged everything but the motherboard and one hard drive. Still no joy. It looks like the video slot on the motherboard itself is bad.

That brought us to plan B which we executed last night. Plan B was not too difficult because both the old and “new” computers have the same motherboard. We pulled all three new hard drives from the refurbished machine and when the broadcast day ended at 11:00 pm last night,  we shut down the old FM computer and went to work. We removed all the hard drives from the FM computer and gave the inside of the machine a good cleaning. Next, we popped in the new drives and connected all the internal cables. The next step was to put the computer back in its cubby hole and hook up all the external cables.

When we powered it up, we found out that it was confused about which drive was which. That was an easy fix. Then I installed the drivers for the dual head video adapter and the audio card (which was slightly different from the one in the original “new” computer). After making some adjustments to the audio levels and screen resolution, we were off to the races.

Once we tested everything we could test, we headed for home. I got to bed about 1:00 AM. I know, that’s not late for many of you, but I usually get up at about 5:30. This morning I slept in till about 5:55. After putting on some clothes, I stumbled to the office on the other side of the house from our bedroom and turned on the radio. At precisely 6:00 the Honduran national anthem began to play. Had Mildred been awake and had I been a little more awake, I may have quoted young Anakin Skywalker when he first started up the pod racer he’d built – “IT’S WOORRRKIIINNGGG!!!!” Let’s pray that it keeps on working so I don’t have to.

Dual Language Short Clip from Jerry Petersen on Vimeo.

Island Kids

In the early years of modern missions, the philosophy seemed to be that, when entering a new mission field, the first task was to westernize the local population before focusing on sharing the actual Gospel. Thankfully, we have grown a little wiser over the years in that regard. But the loss of heritage in any society is tragic. While presenting the Gospel and dealing with sin, it’s important that missionaries remain sensitive to the non-sinful traditions that make each culture unique. I love to learn about the history of this place. Beside being fun for me, I think it helps me relate and communicate better.

That brings us to a special HRGS Audio Update. I’ve probably lamented publicly before how the mainland culture is overwhelming the island culture. I would guess that somewhere around 40,000 people have moved here from the coast in the last 10 years, roughly tripling our population. The younger generation is losing their sense of history and forgetting much of what makes this such a special place. But there is a group of people who are working to rekindle a love for the culture and history of these islands. Two of them, Artlie Brooks and Pastor Felix Gale joined Peter in the studio this week to talk a little bit about our history here in the islands and some of the activities they are planning.

The Update starts, as usual, with Peter and me reminiscing and prognosticating and then moves on to Artlie and Pastor Felix. I really enjoyed hearing this conversation because I love to learn about the history of the places where I live and visit. If you enjoy that too, set aside about 27 minutes and learn a little about this fascinating place.

Tegus — that’s short for Tegucigalpa, the capital city of Honduras. It’s pronounced Te-goose.

The trip last Wednesday to Tegus went very well. I got all our business done with the lawyers and at the immigration office. The flights over and back were spectacular. When you’re cruising at an altitude of only 10-11,000 feet and the mountain peaks beneath you are often upwards of 8,000 feet, it’s a pretty cool experience.

When I’d finished the video it sounded a little like a commercial for Central American Airlines. I didn’t mean for it to come out like that, but it was my first time flying with them, they are a new airline, and they exceeded my expectations. The other airlines here do a good job as well, except when they sell you a ticket for a flight that has already left. (Easier than Slamming a Revolving Door)

I mentioned that, while I was over in the big city, I did some shopping for the radio station. Believe it or not, we still have not completely finalized the dual language project. We haven’t been able to put the new FM computer on line because the motherboard, incredibly, has only two SATA hard drive ports and we need three. There are adapters that let you plug the new drives into the old fashioned IDE ports, but we can’t get them here on Roatán or over in La Ceiba. I found one in the third store I checked while I was in Tegus. So, once Peter gets a few details straightened out in the automation software, we should be ready for the late night chore of putting it on line, when we are off the air after 11 pm. Afterward, I need to rebuild the old FM computer and put it into service as a station for preparing broadcast logs, downloading FTP files, and so on. Then I need to take the computer that now does those chores and get it upgraded to replace the dinosaur Mildred is using for the finances. So there is still a lot of computer building in my future.

I’m juggling all that with trying to get the station’s lawn tractor running properly and installing a line conditioner in the audio shop so we can get 220 volts to the air conditioner. It doesn’t like running on the 198 to 205 volts that the electric company gives us. Peter and Sandi leave for a three month furlough in less than four weeks, and we are still getting ready to replace the guy wires on the AM tower over on Utila. So our plates are full — as usual.

I hope you enjoy the scenery in this video as much as I did while recording it.

Trip 2 Tegicigalpa from Jerry Petersen on Vimeo.